Um Abraço

You must not injure silence, for it is sacred. João Gilberto's
silence is never broken. Gently and simply he places his voice atop the
fragile silence. The silence holds.

João Gilberto's voice is weightless, its depth infinite;
it is haunting, haunted, insular. He hears as we do not, hears things
we do not. Not only things outside our awareness (the construction
equipment on the next street, the air conditioner in the studio)--but
the possibility of sounds we cannot imagine. And he teaches us the
sound of stillness.

Brazilian popular music is often divided into two eras: the years
before João Gilberto's first recording and the years that
followed. João Gilberto, the singer and guitarist usually
credited with introducing bossa nova in the late 1950s, is one of
the most elusive and respected figures in Brazilian popular music.
In 1995, his work returned to the center of my own musical life,
and just as I had more than thirty years earlier I began to immerse
myself in João Gilberto's extraordinary sounds.

I learned to listen, truly listen, to his music, opening myself
to all his sounds: the words, the sighs, the clicks and hisses. And,
more important, to his silences. I liked to put on my headphones,
turn out the lights, and listen to the wordless chant of
"Undiú" over and over until I could feel his
breath in the room, until I was breathing in his rhythm. I listened
to him sing "You Do Something to Me" until I felt I was
looking into his eyes. Sometimes I dreamed he came to me in the night
and infused me with stillness, taught me his silences.

Listening to his music came to consume all my time, his voice filled
all my space. I wrote an essay
for the Miami Herald about the magic of rediscovering this
remarkable voice from my past. I haunted CD stores and used record
dealers, and hung color enlargements of his album photos on the wall
alongside my desk. I joined an e-mail discussion group called
saudades do brasil to have someone to talk to, someone who understood. I began
to work, with the other saudadeiros' help, on a Gilberto
discography.

In photos João Gilberto's eyes often seem to be looking inward,
or they are open wide, startled, as if he has just emerged from a cave
within himself. When he smiles he seems even farther away--smiling
inwardly, smiling at what he hears, at what only he can hear. I have
a video clip of João Gilberto from the rehearsal of a 1980
television show. His wonderful face is so naked that each note, each
word, each sound he makes registers in his expression. His clear joy
at a well-placed phrase is immediately erased when his voice rasps
harshly against a particular low note. He closes his eyes and sadly
shakes his head.

Reclusive and singular, João Gilberto is a reluctant performer;
his recordings are often separated by decades, his personal appearances
few. In December of 1964, at the height of his American popularity,
João Gilberto played four short sets on the first night of a
nine-day New Year's engagement at Chicago's London House, then declared
the club too noisy and would not return. João Gilberto seldom
gives Interviews.

My search for a rounded portrait of João Gilberto began with
the attempt to glimpse him acting like a regular person. To me, no
other artist was so difficult to picture walking, talking, laughing.

Yet Caetano Veloso, who calls João Gilberto "mi maestro,"
claims that "sometimes he decides, just for fun, to imitate people.
He imitates the way of walking, the way of talking, of anyone. When
he feels like it, he even imitates Fred Astaire."
11

And here is an Italian producer's image of João Gilberto in
Rome: "The other day, on leaving a restaurant, he stayed a long time
conversing with a cat in the street. And the most surprising thing
is that the cat was hypnotized by his language. To my astonishment,
one would be justified in saying the cat could hear the same way he
hears."
12

According to Maria Bethânia, "João Gilberto simply is
music. He plays. He sings. Without stopping. Day and night. He
is very, very strange. But he is the most fascinating being, the
most fascinating person, that I have encountered on the surface of
the earth. João, he is mystery. He hypnotises."
11

Veronique Montaigne, of the French newspaper Le Monde,
visited the singer at home:

"What time is it in Nova York?" Sitting in front of the
large window of the apartment hotel where he lives, the
founding father of bossa nova listens. He speaks of one
thing or another, without apparent logic. He asks questions
about this and that, all in the same tone, using the night
as a renewal. It's two a.m. in Rio, but João Gilberto
doesn't care. For years he has slept by day and worked by
night, in Ipanema, Manhattan or Mexico. He schedules meetings
for midnight, eats at dawn, and lies down, exhausted, when the
sun begins to shine.22

Gilberto's friend Nelson Motta says, "Two or three things
I know about him: he loves all his records, but especially
Chega de Saudade (in spite of the awful remastering
of the later editions), Amoroso, and especially the
new one João (in spite of some technical
problems). . . . I know that he likes boxing, soccer,
cats, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia and São Paulo;
that he's a person of absolute refinement and one of the
most acute and joyous intellects that I've had the privilege
to know."23

No music has given me such great and constant pleasure as
that of João Gilberto. This website is dedicated to
João Gilberto, and to all the people he has touched
or will touch with his music.